Posts by LessWileyCoyote

Cops hand Motorola £25M no-bid deal to keep 2000-era radios alive

There are two Motorolas

This one is Motorola Solutions, which does govt & big business tech. The other one is the bandset biz, Motorola Mobility, owned by Lenovo.

South Korea introduces universal basic mobile data access

It's surprising what can be done with a slow connection if you're patient. I recall a data system for a retail firm with hundreds of stores, where every store had tills that fed sales data to a store controller. This then used a slow modem connection (400 baud IIRC, later 1200 baud) to feed the data back to HQ. Because the controller and connection operated 24/7, but stores only generated data during trading hours, there was plenty of time to get the day's data up to HQ before each store opened the next day. At the time, having data up to date to yesterday at HQ was state of the art.

Claude Code source leak reveals how much info Anthropic can hoover up about you and your system

Hopefully nothing to do with the illustrious Mr Melon Husk.

Ubuntu 26.04 beta arrives packing GNOME 50, which no longer supports Google Drive

I recall having to work on a 450 page Word doc with multiple embedded Excel and PowerPoint elements (and many, many long tables) for one project. No idea of the size but I'm sure it was well into humongous territory.

Microsoft yanks Windows 11 preview update after install failures

MS has been vibe coding for years.

Apple's last tower topples… and the others will follow

Expansion cards

I recall owning a truly ancient PC (somebody else's cast-off) whose hard drive was mounted on an expansion card.

Brit lawmaker targeted by AI deepfake fails to get answers from US Big Tech

"My instinct is to pass a very simple law"

Very simple laws + lack of tech knowledge may mean Unintended Consequences.

When it comes to catastrophic space weather, the UK is holding a cocktail umbrella

Re: Standard response

The first four points were listed in a classic "Yes Minister" sketch.

Payment biz pulls plug on open source charity after KYC spat

LLM talking to LLM?

Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after USB keys fail to decrypt them

And the sight of Count Binface or the Monster Raving Loony Party candidate subtly undermining their attempts to look deeply serious.

Flying cabs, next-gen aircraft cleared for takeoff in 26 states

Lithium-based battery packs? They tend to make for pyrotechnics when subjected to impact, and can burn remarkably intensely, as Glasgow has recently experienced.

UK mobilizes lawyers to keep report on Gatwick 'drone' chaos under wraps

Re: The drones never existed

Definitely deserves the multiple pointing Spiderman meme.

Unpacking the deceptively simple science of tokenomics

If this is tech (which I doubt) tben tech is not for me.

Supposedly big-brained execs are outsourcing decisionmaking to AI

"I got the answer out of Management Year Accounting Software System".

Accenture down to buy Downdetector as part of $1.2 billion deal

Re: Ziff Davis is cratering

The Internet Yellow Pages?

Execs love AI, just not enough to pay for user training

Re: Nobody wants to train anymore

When I started IT in 1980, I was sent on a 12-week residential course on how to design, build and test COBOL programs. Not just write them.

LibreOffice Online dragged out of the attic, dusted off for another go

COOL CODE? LOOL!

Sorry. Couldn't resist it.

Mine's the one with the dark glasses.

6,000 execs struggle to find the AI productivity boom

So right. This is why the spec permitted "noise words" like AND, along with punctuation elements that generated no code. They were hoping that the systems analysts' specification could be run through a compiler to produce functional code without a need for programmers.

Containers, cloud, blockchain, AI – it's all the same old BS, says veteran Red Hatter

The Cloud is just someone else's computer

My memory may be at fault here, but I have a strong impression Jon Honeyball over at PC Pro magazine was saying that regularly a long time before 2015. I guess nobody listened.

Just the Browser is just the beginning: Why breaking free means building small

"Add more lightness, and simplicate". Distant memory suggests this saying came from the aircraft industry. Presumably long since abandoned there.

I remember being able to store the files for a small web site on a single 1.44MB floppy disk.

When AI 'builds a browser,' check the repo before believing the hype

Manglement never learns

I remember nodding at the wisdom of The Plan when I was a developer in the 1980s,and it was old then:

https://cedar.buffalo.edu/~pwrob/jokes/misc/the_plan.txt

How an experienced developer teamed up with Claude to create Elo programming language

Re: Someone with appropraite skills manages to use 'AI' in useful way !!!

Also if you use AI to drastically reduce the workforce now, you run the risk in future of not having a supply of people with enough experience to know how to use the tool safely and productively.

Cue more recruiters searching for 18-year-olds with 20 years' experience.

The Y2K bug delayed my honeymoon … by 17 years!

One of the areas where code *had* to be rewritten to use 4 digit years was banking and insurance - because there were customers with 19th century birthdates, 20th century account opening dates, and 21st century policy renewal dates. Not a lot, but enough to render old methods of guesstimating the century completely invalid.

Also there were a lot of one-man companies involved in Y2K work because in the 1990s that was the standard way of operating as a contractor. Most clients wouldn't engage you unless you operated as a limited company.

Newly launched civil service pension portal from Capita is crapita, users report

The reason MyCSP took over was that Capita's first attempt at running it was rubbish. Why have they been allowed a second attempt?

HSBC spies $207B crater in OpenAI's expansion goals

Re: Their user base may have maxed out.

Derived from the acronym of a longstanding Register term - Total Inability To Support Usual Processing, which in turn is derived from the tendency of dead animals to float upside down.

Pebble, the e-ink smartwatch that refuses to die, just went fully open source

Still using a Pebble Steel. The only smartwatch I've ever liked.

Microsoft's lack of quality control is out of control

Re: "It's difficult to pinpoint precisely"

One could argue that because the US legal system places duty to shareholders before everything, with dire penalties for failing, that the shareholders are actually The Powers That Be, and also sole controllers of the money. Hence the current situation - everywhere, not just at MS.

Azure stumbles in Western Europe, Microsoft blames 'thermal event'

A bit of magic smoke escaped.

There's mushroom for improvement in fungal computing

I misread the heading and for a moment thought there must be a new type of processor called "ShitLake".

Dame Emma Thompson gives the 'AI revolution' both barrels

Re: Not saying it's a red flag but...

Superb. Thank you for bringing that back into the spotlight. I remember it being old but good in the 1980s, and it seems we still haven't learned.

AWS outage turned smart homes into dumb boxes – and sysadmins into therapists

Re: First world problem

Adverts for Eightsleep started popping up in something I followed, so I remember taking a look at their website. From what I recall it's a bulky mattress covered with sensors and filled with pipes containing distilled water, with a box beside the bed that heats or cools said water and pumps it through the mattress. In addition to the monthly charges, there's also the cost and faff of replacing all the water at regular intervals to prevent it from becoming some sort of bacteriological hazard. I also recall hearing complaints that the pipework tended to spring leaks after a while. Somehow I just don't like the idea of sleeping on something that combines mains electricity and water, and is apparently known to leak - anecdotally, of course.

Windows 11 update knocks out USB mice, keyboards in recovery mode

Re: The question is...

Yours.

Managers are throwing entry-level workers under the bus in race to adopt AI

I want more & I want it now !!!

Now I am reminded of the line delivered with gusto by Trevor Howard in the film "Sir Henry at Rawlinson End" :

"I don't know what I want and I want it NOW!!"

This seems to be current leadership thinking. The film (and TH) score pretty highly in terms of demented leadership. A Vivian Stanshall classic IIRC.

Techie found an error message so rude the CEO of IBM apologized for it

I recall some excitement at work when a government system emitted the response "Error 4036: Some day they're going to specify this message".

Hundreds of orgs urge Microsoft: don’t kill off free Windows 10 updates

Re: Nothing In The UK News About This

I am pretty sure those 'mispronunciations' were us oiks in Sarf Lunnon taking the p*** out of the desperate gentrification of some of the inner suburbs. Another one I remember was 'St Reetham' for Streatham.

AI coding hype overblown, Bain shrugs

Not going to use it.

Every time I go through the process of problem definition, solution design, solution construction, I can feel my brain learning and refining skills. Using AI for any part of those processes means I lose valuable experience and become less skilled than I otherwise would be. Or waste time correcting stupid errors that teach me nothing.

The best kind of work is a life-long learning experience.

'Suddenly deprecating old models' users depended on a 'mistake,' admits OpenAI's Altman

Re: Span

"...lovely Spam, wonderful Spam..."

Hands-on jobs to grow fastest, because AI can't touch them

AI = The Plan

For those old enough to remember "In the beginning was The Plan...", it struck me that you could replace every instance of "The Plan" with "AI" and it would still be pretty true...

25 years on from Y2K, let's all be glad it happened way back then

One of the reasons mainframe assembler programs hadn't been replaced is that they could be significantly faster than the higher-level languages in use in the 90s. A financial org, aware of their Y2K problem, brought in a prestigious consultancy who confidently said they could provide a replacement system. In tests, it was unable to complete the overnight reconciliation process for accounts before the next day branch opening times, something the assembler code managed with time to spare.

The assembler code was rewritten to handle 4-digit years, and for all I know might still be in use now.

Doctor Who theme added to national sound archive to honor innovation, longevity

Re: his composing skills, which he used to create the theme for Steptoe and Son

Especially as both series started in a junkyard.

Wubuntu: The lovechild of Windows and Linux nobody asked for

Re: I recognise this naming scheme

Especially as I think I remember hearing that "Wario" was a near-enough wordplay on the Japanese word for bad, which I think is "warui".

O2's AI granny knits tall tales to waste scam callers' time

Hmm. Sounds remarkably similar to the "Crazy Mazy" robot offered by jollyrogertelephone.com on their "Our Robots" page (US numbers). Check out the demo recordings of the various characters, they're rather entertaining.

Windows 11 continues to creep up behind Windows 10

Next year might be the time I make the shift to 0patch to keep the security patches coming when MS stops supplying them.

Muppet broke the datacenter every day, in its own weighty way

Re: Sizing

I do remember working somewhere which had two very generously sized gentlemen. They were known as, and cheerfully answered to, FB1 and FB2. No, the acronym wasn't Funderbird (for those that remember the Thunderbirds puppet series) but something much blunter.

Windows 11 continues slog up the Windows 10 mountain

Think I might look into a 0patch ('zeropatch') subscription after the MS updates to W10 cease, just to keep the security updates coming.

CrowdStrike hires outside security outfits to review troubled Falcon code

Re: This parameter count mismatch evaded multiple layers of build validation and testing

"As I understand it, the errant code was so deeply intertwined with the kernel that it wasn't possible to throw an error"

Pure speculation here, based on a completely different OS and architecture, but whatever: one additional factor that might have contributed to the instant disaster is that the uninitialised pointer held the hex value 9c. If you use that as an address, my thought is that it is so low in the memory space it might be something that is only supposed to be used during OS load, and any attempt to access it, even by the kernel, causes an immeduate protective stop because it's a "this must never happen" condition.

Meta's AI safety system defeated by the space bar

Re: AYE EYE

I predict that with the near universal use of sans-serif fonts, anyone with a first name of Al is going to have a difficult time in chat apps.

How did a CrowdStrike file crash millions of Windows computers? We take a closer look at the code

Re: Address 0x000000000000009c

Back in the days when I was programming on mainframes, an address with that many digits was an absolute address, i.e. relative to the total memory space of the machine. Address 9C would have been firmly in what we called "the bottom left-hand corner of the machine", where things like the system clock resided. I have no idea whether that concept translates in any way to the PC world, but I do know that if any process on a mainframe had high enough privileges to access that area, but was not the actual OS, everything stopped. Very quickly.

Administrators have update lessons to learn from the CrowdStrike outage

What if?

What if the next time something like this happens, it:

- scrambles the boot sector, or

- kills the BIOS, or

- fries a chip on every motherboard?

How much damage could any of those do to human society, if we learn nothing from this instance?

Azure VMs ruined by CrowdStrike patchpocalypse? Microsoft has recovery tips

Re: Someone is going to get their ass kicked

Whenever you're given a really, really stupid order, ask for written confirmation. Saved my behind when an order to put a one-line patch live without testing brought down a key government system for three days.

(The patch was fine. It was the undocumented dicking around in unallocated memory that it unintentionally trampled that was the problem. But at least it found it).